The creators of Magic: the Gathering announced on Twitter that the new card Gyruda, Doom of Depths is now banned in all formats exclusively on Magic: the Gathering Online. This comes after the platform’s developers discovered that the card did not interact as intended with enchantment Leyline of the Void.
Initially, Magic: the Gathering Online (MTGO) banned Gyruda in Legacy only. Players participating in leagues at the time of the announcement received reimbursed entry fees and the ban announcement also mentioned that MTGO had moved the weekend’s marquee Legacy event, the Showcase Qualifier, to April 26th. The developers noted that they planned to release a patch in the coming week before unbanning the card.
Unfortunately, the glitched interaction between Gyruda and Leyline proved too detrimental to ignore. MTGO developers tweeted soon after that the card would be banned in Standard, Pioneer, Modern, and Vintage as well.
Wizards of the Coast usually only bans cards when they negatively impact diversity or become ubiquitous in a certain format. This Gyruda ban represents one of the first occasions, if not the first, that the publisher banned a card because of a bug.
Gyruda, Doom of Depths, entered Constructed formats alongside the rest of the new set Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths. The six-mana Legendary Creature features new mechanic Companion. Companion lets players cast a copy of the card from their sideboard if they build their deck a certain way. Gyruda’s Companion condition restricts all nonland cards in the player’s deck to cards with even converted mana costs.
Much like the other nine cards with the Companion mechanic, Gyruda birthed new archetypes in different formats. The card’s powerful enter-the-battlefield ability makes both players “mill” four cards from the top of their decks. It then lets the player return a creature sent to the Graveyard with this ability to the battlefield, as long as its mana cost is even.
Constructed players often use Leyline of the Void in their sideboards to interfere with powerful graveyard strategies. Due to a quirk in Magic‘s often complicated rules, Leyline shouldn’t stop Gyruda from returning a creature to the battlefield. On Magic: the Gathering Online however, players found themselves unable to use Gyruda’s ability with a Leyline in play and it appears that this Companion has become popular enough across multiple formats that this glitch made the banning necessary.
